From the archive, 6 November 1991: The man who came from nothing

Nobody for a time could be certain that the amazements had ended: the life force, with its booming voice, might always appear on some distant beach. But the facts said sadly otherwise. They drew a line under the career of Robert Maxwell.

That will not be the end of it, of course. Mr Maxwell's empire, riven by debt and doubt, remains a story with many chapters to come. Yet it still seems right to say what (quite literally) a remarkable man he was.

Robert Maxwell collected enemies like others collect stamps. He was, in some lights, a monster: he courted, and inflicted, opprobrium. He was never removed from the action: it was his voice, threatening, you found on the end of the telephone in the night. His word seldom came bonded. His over-arching personality infected every enterprise he touched. He flew ever onwards, on a balloon of aspiration, ambition and gagging writs.

But human beings are more than caricatures. The caricature Maxwell had nothing in common with the father Maxwell who, through many travails, brought up a stable and devoted family. The caricature itself had been built, over years of toil, as an immigrant from the detritus of world war constructed a global business on little more than wit and driving determination. It was appalling, in the wake of the DTI report which temporarily banished him from trading life, that he should return and prosper – but also awesome in the verve and resolution. He was a giant of giant contradictions and any true assessment has to include them all, seeking the man behind the mask of certitude.

Robert Maxwell leaves an empire in crisis. It is easy to say that without him – without 'the Max Factor', as his colleagues call it – all must fall apart. Perhaps that is true. But it neglects the things he helped preserve: a Daily Mirror and surrounding group intrinsically strong and doughtily unchanged by his ministrations; a New York Daily News alive rather than dead. And it neglects the good things he did: the London Daily News (too briefly) and The European. There will, alas, be no more injunctions of silence from Captain Maxwell. There will be a chance to examine him whole. That needs to be done fairly. Robert Maxwell, at the tragic close, had perhaps grown to be not the inspiration but the problem for everything he owned. But everyone who knew him will have learned something worth remembering.

These archive extracts are compiled by members of the Guardian's research and information department. Email: research.department@guardian.co.uk

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